Follow the crazy adventures of an Alabama cyclist taking on the Race Across America (again) in 2017.

End of the Season Statistics and THANKS

First, a huge thank you to everyone in the cycling community and to all who have been following my racing this year. I’ll expand this thank you at the end of the post, but I wanted to thank everyone up front first.

These statistics all run from November 1, 2010 until October 30, 2011 – 364 days worth of riding and racing. This is a deviation from previous years where I have calculated statistics for what I would call my racing/training season – from December 1st of the previous year until the weekend ending close to October 15th of the current year. This strategy is somewhat less than precise and completely ignores the “off season” where I am still riding, commuting etc… So from here on out, I’m just going to stick with a full calendar year (ending on the nearest weekend, in this case October 30th) for tracking all of the stats. The Polar Protrainer software makes it easy to re-calculate these statistics over new date ranges.

Statistics Summary
November 1, 2010 – October 30, 2011

Statistic

Avg

Max

Min

Total

Weekly training time (hours)

22.43

32.95

9.57

1166.7

Weekly distance (miles)

338.4

502.7

140.3

17,597

Workouts per week (#)

11

17

4

580

Weekly climbing (feet)

30,738

52,188

6,821

1,598,333

For eagle-eyed observers who note that the climbing total is lower than that reported on Strava, the reason is because I am generating these reports from my Polar Protrainer software. I wrote a converter that converts Garmin .FIT files and .TCX files into the .HRM format that Polar expects. The Polar Protrainer software then applies a smoothing filter when it is calculating total ascent and other statistics, but I can’t figure out how to turn it off so that the statistics match up with Strava, which doesn’t apply any smoothing filters.

Some weekly milestone totals (from Strava):

11 weeks with more than 400 miles of riding, including one 502 mile week

8 weeks with more than 50,000 ft of climbing, including one week with 58,000 ft

The mileage and climbing represent a substantial increase from previous years, but my heartrate average dropped by 5bpm per ride on average which is a substantial decrease in intensity. The extra easy miles mixed in with bouts of intensity from racing and Strava KOM attempts combined with “SportLegs” and wearing compression clothing nearly 100% of the time that I am not on the bike or sleeping has been the perfect formula to keep from overtraining.

Comparison to past years
All years run from the Monday closest to November 1st to the Sunday closest to October 31st. This should result in about 365 days for each year give or take a day or two.

Statistic(per week)

2008Avg/Max

2009Avg/Max

2010Avg/Max

2011Avg/Max

Training (hours)

14.0/20.2

13.4/20.8

15.4/20.9

22.4/33.0

Distance (miles)

238.4/337.1

241.8/369.4

265.5/380.3

338.4/502.7

HR avg (bpm)

137/165

139/161

136/176

131/178

Workouts (#)

11/15

9/14

11/14

11/17

Climbing (feet)

12.7k/20.3k

13.5k/29.3k

14.4k/22.8k

30.7k/52.2k

Statistic(yearly total)

2008Total

2009Total

2010Total

2011Total

Training (hours)

726

698

798

1,167

Distance (miles)

12.4k

12.6k

13.8k

17.6k

Workouts (#)

560

4451

546

580

Climbing (feet)

661k

677k

750k

1,598k

1 When I first got my Garmin in November 2008 (which falls in the 2009 year), I was leaving my commutes as one ride. In other words, I would just stop the timer while I was at work and then start it back up for the return trip home. During 2008, I was using a Polar HRM which wouldn’t let you do that so each commute was counted separately as a workout. Then at some point later in the 2009 season, I decided to just do separate workouts for each commute on my Garmin. So really, the only apples-to-apples comparison for the number of workouts is for the years 2008, 2010, and 2011.

Racing Season Summary
The 2011 season has definitely been my best ever, but there have been a few disappointments as well … so I think I’ll call this the season of “almosts”. Somehow I managed to have some of the best results of my racing career, and yet, each result was tinged with a little bit of disappointment about what might have been. For example, near the beginning of the season I won the Alabama State road race this year by being the first place Alabama rider across the line, but I narrowly missed out on winning the race outright in a two-up downhill sprint. Then, near the end of the season, I almost won an NRC race solo. After getting caught on the last lap by a chase group of three, I managed to get DFL in the sprint and miss out being on an NRC podium by exactly one spot. In the same weekend, I missed out on a top 10 in an NRC omnium by one spot – placing 11th. Don’t get me wrong, I am really, really happy with those results, but it is still a bit disappointing to come so close and still miss out. In the Six Gap Criterium, I almost won a $150 prime towards the end of the race after almost bridging to the winning break earlier in the race. In the Six Gap Century the next morning, Jimmy Schurman and I almost beat the course record – falling short by 1 minute. For the season, I have six 4th place finishes, five 2nd place finishes, and three 11th place finishes – the dreaded “almost” positions (i.e., almost on the podium, almost winning, and almost in the top 10).

One “almost” that I am very thankful for is how a crash in May turned out when it could have been much, much worse. On the next to last lap at the Sandy Springs criterium, I came into a corner too hot, over-corrected when my wheels started to slide out from under me, and ended up t-boning the metal barriers shoulder first at pretty much full speed (30+mph), and somehow came out of the wreck with only a torn pectoral muscle, separated shoulder, and broken toe. This was the first broken bone and major injury I’ve had on the bike in nearly 20 years of racing even having gone down in many different accidents throughout the years. Everything healed up great and three weeks later I was racing again.

Despite all of the “almosts”, there has been lots to be thankful for and to celebrate –

Strava – motivation to climb more than I ever have before – should hit 2 MILLION feet by the end of the year and hopefully win a year-long worldwide competition. http://app.strava.com/komchallenge/men/2011 Fun to compete again people from all over the world, and there have been some close months that I have lost and yet it has still been really fun.

Athens Twilight – I won a late race prime coming around the entire United Healthcare leadout train (although they weren’t going for the prime) and still finished in the top 30.

Improved time-trialing – I have moved from the very bottom to somewhere roughly in the middle of the results sheet in time trials – including one time trial that was well-attended with strong riders where I almost won money. Yes, it was one of those 11th place “almost” positions where they paid 10 deep.

Podium, baby! – Counting the Strava monthly competition, I have been on the podium 25 times this year!

And finally, finally, some more thank you’s
I am deeply appreciative to so many people who make it possible for me to ride and race my bike as much as I do. First of all my @beautifulwife, Kristine Toone, and my kids Analise and Josiah, my parents and all of my teammates, friends, and family. I’m working on a separate post with a map of all the places that we have travelled and all the places where we have stayed for races. In that post, I’ll thank people by name who have helped out so much. I’ll leave this exceedingly long post with just one more thanks – thanks!

Post navigation

7 thoughts on “End of the Season Statistics and THANKS”

Unfortunately it looks like you are going to lose the climbing competition… the current leader had one pretty good ride where he logged 14 billion vertical feet (2.6 million miles, or a little over 10 times the distance from earth to the moon).

@Jacob – thanks! Yeah, I know I was sad when I saw that. I checked the Russian space agency to see if they had any cyclists taking regular trips to the ISS with their GPS, but they wouldn’t respond to my emails😉